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The official, who has day-to-day senior responsibilities for the war, offered a potentially grimmer view than what has been publicly offered by others.
"Every year the insurgency can generate more and more manpower," despite military attacks, he said.

Although there has been security progress, he pointed to an internal assessment that there are 500,000 to 1 million "disaffected" men between the ages of 15 and 25 along the Afghan-Pakistan border region, he said.
The U.S. military could sustain a war "'indefinitely," the official said. But the goal is to achieve reconciliation and allow the Afghan government o function and provide security and services to the people.
Without that, he said, "we will be fighting here forever."